The 1970s was a pivotal decade in the Indian social, cultural, political and economic landscape: the global oil crisis, wars with China and Pakistan in the previous decade, the Bangladesh war of 1971, labour and food shortages, widespread political corruption, and the declaration of the state of Emergency. Amidst this backdrop Indian cinema in both its popular and art/parallel film forms flourished.
This exciting new collection brings together original research from across the arts and humanities disciplines that examine the legacies of the 1970s in India's cinemas, offering an invaluable insight into this important period. The authors argue that the historical processes underway in the 1970s are important even today, and can be deciphered in the aural and visual medium of Indian cinema. The book explores two central themes: first, the popular cinema's role in helping to construct the decade's public culture; and second, the powerful and under-studied archive of the decade as present in India's popular cinemas.
This book is based on a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture.
About the Author: Priya Joshi is Associate Professor of English and Founding Director of the New India Forum at Temple University, USA. She is author of the forthcoming Nationalism and Public Fantasy in Bollywood Cinema, a sequel to her prize-winning book, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture and the English Novel in India (2002), in which she explored public culture and emerging modernities in South Asia.
Rajinder Dudrah is Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. He has researched and published widely in film, media and cultural studies in international journals. His books include Bollywood Travels: Culture, Diaspora and Border Crossings in Popular Hindi Cinema (2012), Bhangra: Birmingham and Beyond (2007), and Bollywood: Sociology Goes to the Movies (2006).
